| As dean of admissions at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Marilee Jones was responsible for
ensuring that applicants represented their academic backgrounds honestly. So it
was more than a shock when the 55-year-old resigned Thursday, admitting that she
had misled school officials over a 28-year period into believing that she held
three degrees from New York institutions. In fact, she had never received even
an undergraduate degree from any school. While Jones's case is extreme, it
points to a major concern for any corporation or institution that hires
employees: embellishments and outright lies on resumes. But if an employer doesn't catch the falsehoods, how does an employee live with such a big lie in Jones's case, a falsehood that she maintained for 28 years? Psychologist Paul Ekman speculates that Jones's case is likely related to self-esteem. MIT officials noted that a college degree probably wasn't required for the entry-level position that Jones took on in 1979, and apparently no one checked her credentials with each successive promotion. Still, by all accounts, Jones was good at her job. "Even though the fake degrees didn't initially give her tangible benefits, she personally needed them in order to get people to respect her," Ekman says. "And in time it appears she did get a lot of respect, but by then she couldn't reveal she had lied without losing her position." Ekman says many people are tempted to exaggerate their credentials for the same reason a kid exaggerates his father's strength, but that most people resist. "They either know from past experience that they could never get away with it—perhaps because they are bad liars, they don't like taking risks—some people are risk takers so it attracts them to lying, or they are religiously observant," Ekman says. Early in her career, Jones didn't resist the temptation, and it may have become too difficult to rectify the situation as she climbed the workplace ladder. "My bet is that it was never out of her mind completely that she had taken such a risk, but I doubt she spent many nights worrying someone would catch her," Ekman says. "She had done such a great job and was so admired, that she probably became confident after all these years that no one was going to check." But the potential damages caused by hiring a poorly qualified employee are serious for companies. Depending on the position applied for, different background-information firms offer different service packages. For example, a credit check may not be necessary for a person applying for an administrative job; but an executive or financial position may call for a check of references, a credit check, a criminal-records check and even a check of driving records. With such diligence, it's much riskier for today's job hunters to lie than it was 30 years ago when Jones filled out her first application at MIT. |